The process of measuring blood flow within a body of a subject non-invasively is useful in diagnosing and treating the subject. This is particularly the case where a part of a subject or patient, such as a tissue or organ, suffers from ischaemia due for example to a stroke. Determining perfusion indices including the blood flow through such a tissue or organ can provide important information to a physician in order to determine an appropriate treatment regime for the patient.
A number of systems pertaining to blood flow information have been disclosed. In general, the systems involve a contrast agent delivered as an intravascular bolus during a dynamic imaging session such as computerized tomography (CT), nuclear medicine (NM) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The temporal profile of the image intensity in a pixel or region of interest (ROI) reflects the characteristics of the contrast agent hence the blood passing through the vasculature. The typical method of obtaining quantitative perfusion indices involves several steps including: (a) convert the signal intensity profile to the contrast concentration profile depending on the type of imaging modality; (b) measure the arterial input function (AIF) from a feeding vessel to the tissue of interest; (c) measure the tissue profile; (d) extract the tissue impulse residue function (IRF) from the AIF and tissue profile using deconvolution; (e) calculate quantitative perfusion indices including blood flow (BF), blood volume (BV) and mean transit time (MTT) using the IRF. Furthermore, the tissue IRF contains information about the flow heterogeneity associated with dispersion of blood transit time through capillaries, which is an important factor determining the efficacy of oxygen delivery to tissue. However, in the case of major vessel disease, such as acute stroke or carotid artery stenosis, the measured AIF is often associated with a delay and dispersion before it reaches the tissue of interest, and causing overestimation of the MTT and underestimation of the BF.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,190,744 a contrast agent is injected into a patient for the purpose of detecting blood flow abnormalities. This disclosure describes in some detail the different types of agents that can be used and the administration of those agents into the patient. However results of the perfusion process may not be evaluated until some time after the initial injection of the contrast agent and is thus not a real time process. Furthermore there is no disclosure of obtaining quantitative data relating to blood flow and blood volume which can assist a physician to make a relatively quick and accurate diagnosis and decide on what steps can be taken to treat the patient. More particularly this document does not account for any delay or dispersion of the contrast agent in an initial bolus injection.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,542,769 there is disclosed an imaging system associated with MRI whereby a bolus containing optical and MRI contrast agents is administered to a patient in order to determine perfusion indices. It uses an optical contrast agent which is injected into the patient and is used to define the arterial input function. The optical contrast is injected so as to overcome the problem of the signal intensity of the vasculature not being proportional to the amount of contrast agent with MRI. A disadvantage of measuring the signal change in arteries using MRI is that it does not provide a true indication of the contrast volume as MRI depends upon electromagnetic fields that are altered due to the contrast agent. By using an optical contrast agent the invention disclosed in this document tries to overcome these disadvantages. Again there is no taking into the account the delay and dispersion associated with the bolus progressing through the artery selected and through the tissue or organ in the region of interest.
The present invention seeks to substantially overcome, or at least ameliorate, any one or more of the abovementioned disadvantages.